A few days after my eye-opening conversation with Zhang Rang, the Eighth Prince returns. "Come Your Highness, you MUST be ready to receive His Highness this evening." I've been listening to Fatima's incessant nagging since I woke up this morning, eight hours ago. It's a miracle I haven't gone deaf and a curse she hasn't gone mute. Xiaoyue is out trying to find someone to take in Zhangxiu.
It's a crime, punishable by death, for a male other than the Emperor or the princes to be in the Imperial Palace at night. Hence, up to this point, Xiaoyue and I have been passing Zhangxiu off as a maid. I can't help but giggle when I remember Xiaoyue telling me about how much Zhangxiu was complaining about having to put on a dress. Xiaoyue and I know it will be all but impossible to maintain this façade once the Eighth Prince returns for good. I'm loathe to do it, but it's safer for all parties involved if we split the siblings apart for now.
Unfortunately, this means I'm stuck with Fatima until Xiaoyue comes back. At the moment, I'm dressed in a set of tight-fitting Xiongnu-style clothes, a gift from Princess Cilanru. Gods, these are so much more comfortable than those damn dresses. Absentmindedly, I wave Fatima off, "A few more shots and then I'll change." Bending down, I pull back the string of the beautifully crafted crossbow. Carved from dark spruce and inlaid with gold, the crossbow caught my eye during the weeks I was confined to the Jujue Palace. It's the Eighth Prince's weapon of course, but I've come to realize that, outside of orders that go directly against those of the Eighth Prince, I have total control over the affairs of the palace. It's a surprisingly nice feeling. Maybe it's because, for the first time in months, I finally have some semblance of freedom.
Bringing the weapon up, I align its sights with the target two hundred paces away. I focus, closing off my senses, narrowing them. I exhale. Time slows. For a split second, I forget about everything. I forget about my marr—imprisonment. I forget about the alien land all around me. I forget about home. But I can't forget about the Eighth Prince. His cold, his nothingness, creep into my fingers just as I squeeze the trigger. The shot goes wide the bolt landing uselessly next to the two dozen previous shots. A condescending chuckle. Without even turning, I know who that smirking laugh belongs to. Quan Linwen.
"A good effort Princess. If you had shot like that maybe Quan Kou might still be alive, huh?" Vicious sarcasm oozes off her words. "Let me show you how it's done." Stepping up next to me, Quan Linwen pulls a strange contraption from her back. It's a bow, hinges connecting the two halves of the weapon, allowing it to be more easily concealed. With inhuman ease, Linwen flicks the bow open and strings it. She draws an arrow from a quiver attached to her right thigh and lets fly a black-feathered shaft in a single breath. The ear-splitting twang of the bow and demonic screech of the arrow is deafening, indictive of Linwen's incredible strength.
The arrow sails through the air, cutting an elegant black arc through the azure skies. It flies true, striking the innermost ring of the target just above the bullseye, an incredible shot for any archer ever more so for a woman. Linwen smirks haughtily and throws me a look that says, "Let's see you beat that." You're on.
Once more, I bring the crossbow up, aligning its sights with the little speck that is the target. This time, rather than purging myself of all feeling, all emotion, I let it sweep over me. Rolling tides of fear and defiance, longing and desire. With instinct and emotion alone, my finger clutches the trigger. I envision the Eighth Prince's face, that frozen and deadly veneer of indifference, over the target. If the Eighth Prince is the cold entropy that is slowly breaking this empire down, then I will be the vibrant inferno from which a phoenix is born anew. I squeeze the trigger. Bullseye.
Crossbows- Crossbows in China are found to have dated backto 650 BC and by the Han Dynasty, crossbows the favored weapons of Han armies.They were mass-produced with a scale and complexity that the West would beunable to match until centuries later, with up to several hundred thousandbeing produced in the Han Dynasty. The Chinese also made numerous improvementson the crossbow, making repeating "Cho-ko-nu" and massive artillery crossbowsthat surpassed Roman ballista in size, power, and complexity.
YOU ARE READING
The Foreign Empress
Historical FictionA cold and potentially fatal marriage, an imperial court embroiled in assassination and conflict, a hidden conspiracy that could shatter not just a four-century-long peace but the empire itself. In the midst of it all, a girl whose struggle to survi...
